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What Next: TBD | How Meta Profits Off Fraud

Slate Daily Feed

Slate Podcasts

News, Business, Society & Culture

41.1K Ratings

🗓️ 16 November 2025

⏱️ 34 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The parent company of Facebook and Instagram, Meta, doesn’t (just) have a scam problem—with 10 percent of its revenue coming from scam ads, and a third of all successful scams in America using a Meta platform at some point, it’s more an interdependence with scammers. Guest: Jeff Horwitz, tech reporter for Reuters. Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

While all the whews of Whoville were at McDonald's eating, the Grinch from his lair started plotting and scheming.

0:06.0

Girkin flavored fries and odd socks will send them crackers. So try the Grinch's new meal and head down to Macers.

0:16.0

Until 4th of Jan from 11am, price and participation may vary while stocks last grinched for adults.

0:20.0

Here's the truth about AI.

0:22.2

AI is only as powerful as the platform it's built into.

0:25.8

ServiceNow puts AI to work for people across your business,

0:29.7

removing friction and frustration for your employees,

0:32.8

supercharging productivity for your developers,

0:35.8

providing intelligent tools for your service agents

0:38.1

to make customers happier, all built into a single platform you can use right now.

0:43.4

That's why the world works with ServiceNow.

0:46.6

Visit ServiceNow.com slash UK slash AI for people.

1:05.4

If you open up Facebook or Instagram and search for, let's say, Elon Musk, the odds are pretty good that you're going to be served some questionable ads.

1:14.8

In which Elon is, you know, offering investment tips or, you know, giving away Tesla is in a raffle or, you know,

1:18.8

wants to, like, talk to you person, talk to his fans one-on-one.

1:22.3

That's Jeff Horwitz, a tech reporter for Reuters.

1:28.5

And depending on your level of Internet savvy, you might click on one of those ads.

1:33.6

In which case, meta systems will serve you more fraudulent ads because you've basically kind of flagged yourself as a bit of a dummy.

1:38.3

Apologies.

1:39.3

But you can see where this is going.

1:42.1

That's kind of how the system does work, right?

1:44.3

It's like, oh, who's a good market for scam ads?

...

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